From the Cheap Seats: Lefty 5280 Ignores Conservative Women

The reliably left-wing mag bent over backwards to ignore conservatives in their “Colorado Woman” cover story

We at Cheap Seats don’t pay much attention to 5280 magazine unless we’re suddenly overcome by a burning desire to know who makes the best French fries or dim sum in Denver.

But even casual observers couldn’t help but notice how the magazine’s editors bent over backwards to ignore conservatives in the December cover story, “The Colorado Woman.”

The issue includes a glowing profile of Hickenlooper chief-of-staff Roxane White, throwing in for good measure the standard outrage over the so-called “wage gap” between men and women earners (Note to 5280 editors: It may shock you to learn that many women drop out of the workforce for years to stay home with children, which largely accounts for the gap. You’re welcome).

The article even takes the reader on a trip back in time in order to dig up paleo-lefty Pat Schroeder for “an open letter to the women of Colorado.”

But the magazine’s bias is most glaring in its interview with female Colorado Supreme Court justices. Of course, we assumed that meant Chief Justice Nancy Rice and Justices Allison Eid and Monica Marquez.

There’s just one problem: Eid is a conservative. Not to worry: Rather than acknowledge the existence of one conservative woman in the state of Colorado, 5280 decided to limit its article to female chief justices, which meant Rice and former Chief Justice Mary Mullarkey, who retired three years ago but was a dependable liberal vote during her years on the court. Crisis averted!

Anyone reading the issue would assume that no Republican or conservative women hold positions of power or engage in any sort of leadership activity in Colorado. There is a grudging mention in tiny print of University of Denver alum Condoleezza Rice’s appointment as the first black female Secretary of State.

So, just to be clear: If you’re a liberal “educational activist,” you get a big photo and write-up, but if you’re a conservative, you have to be United States Secretary of State to receive any ink from the arbiters of who’s important at 5280.

That doesn’t even include the 11 Republican women in the state House and Senate, or many of the Colorado women who were movers and shakers in this year’s historic recall elections, which was only the biggest political story of the year.

Of course, we doubt any of that will impress the urbane crew at 5280, especially since the December issue also includes an article entitled, “Hudak Resignation Changes Almost Nothing.” Keep telling yourself that, liberals.

“Colorado women know no good comes from caring too much about what others think or say—or about what they do with their own lives,” says the magazine.

Nobody fits that description better than Colorado’s conservative women, who are inevitably targeted for special derision by the left. Fortunately, they’re tough—too tough to be bothered by 5280’s predictable slight.

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I SO agree with this article. This bias is clear throughout the whole issue, but in my mind it was starkest in the Hudak story. Granted, the hateful sexist messages sent to Hudak and other female democrats were heinous (conservative men, you are not helping our cause when you do this not to mention you are digusting pigs). Yet the author made no mention of the hate spewed toward conservative women daily and often by prominent jurnos (Bashir most recently). She made only a cursory mention of the comments made to the rape victim as “not well received” and “clearly inciting a negative response”. I too initially subscribed to this magazine and have put up with it because of the food angle but I’m done, and they have already heard from me.